This vice is heartless and dangerous when confined to its natural limits, the circles of society; but, when it invades the outer walks of life, and, most of all, when it gets mixed up with the administration of justice, it becomes a tyrant as ruthless and injurious in its way, as he who fiddled while Rome was in flames. We have no desire to exaggerate the evils of the state of society in which we live; but an honest regard to truth will, we think, induce every observant man to lament the manner in which this power, under the guise of popular opinion, penetrates into all the avenues of the courts, corrupting, perverting, and often destroying, the healthful action of their systems. Biberry furnished a clear example of the truth of these remarks on the morning of the day on which Mary Monson was to be tried. The gaol-window had its crowd of course; and though the disposition of curtains, and other similar means of concealment, completely baffled vulgar curiosity, they could not cloak the resentful feelings to which this reserve gave birth. Most of those who were drawn thither belonged to a class who fancied it was not affliction enough to be accused of two of the highest crimes known to the laws; but that to this grievous misfortune should be added a submission to the stare of the multitude. It was the people’s laws the accused was supposed to have disregarded; and it was their privilege to anticipate punishment, by insult. “Why don’t she show herself, and let the public look on her?” demanded one curious old man, whose head had whitened under a steadily increasing misconception of what the rights of this public were. “I’ve seen murderers afore now, and ain’t a bit afeard on ’em, if they be well ironed and look’d a’ter.” This sally produced a heartless laugh; for, sooth to say, where _one_ feels, under such circumstances, as reason, and justice, and revelation would tell them to feel, ten feel as the demons prompt. “You cannot expect that a lady of fashion, who plays on the harp and talks French, will show her pretty face to be gazed at by common folk,” rejoined a shabby-genteel sort of personage, out of whose waistcoat-pocket obtruded the leaves of a small note-book, and the end of a gold pen. This man was a reporter, rendered malignant by meeting with opposition to his views of imagining that the universe was created to furnish paragraphs for newspapers. He was a half-educated European, who pronounced all his words in a sort of boarding-school dialect, as if abbreviation offended a taste ‘sicken’d over by learning.’ Another laugh succeeded this supercilious sneer; and three or four lads, half-grown and clamorous, called aloud the name of “Mary Monson,” demanding that she should show herself. At that moment the accused was on her knees, with Anna Updyke at her side, praying for that support which, as the crisis arrived, she found to be more and more necessary!